Ep 45: The Dead Sea Scrolls With Kipp Davis

00:00- There have been fragments of Dead Sea Scrolls

00:03that have popped up on the market in the last 20 or so years.

00:08And so how many of these fragments have surfaced

00:11and were purchased, I think since 2002?

00:13- I've counted around 80.

00:16- 80?

00:17- Yeah.

00:18- But you and a handful of others were able to gain access

00:22to some of these and conduct some analysis,

00:26which resulted in a pretty attention grabbing conclusion,

00:31which was what?

00:33- We're suspicious that probably all of them are forgeries.

00:38- Wow.

00:39(upbeat music)

00:41- Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

00:45- And I'm Dan Beecher.

00:46- And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast

00:49where we increase public access to the academic study

00:51of the Bible and religion and combat the spread

00:55of misinformation about the same.

00:57How go things today, Dan?

00:59- Good, good.

01:01I've made some plans.

01:02I've booked a trip to the Museum of the Bible

01:04to see fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls,

01:07which right here is going to be a great.

01:09Oh, wait, well, maybe that won't work out.

01:11We'll, we've got an expert on to help us with that.

01:15- Speaking of which, let's introduce our guests for today.

01:20This is an old friend of mine.

01:22This is Kip Davis.

01:23He is a public scholar of the Hebrew Bible

01:25with specializations in early Judaism

01:27and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

01:29Thank you so much for being here, Kip.

01:30- Hey guys, it's good to see you.

01:32- Yeah.

01:33- Yeah, I'm afraid to tell you, Dan, that that.

01:36- If you're going to go see Dead Sea Scrolls fragments

01:39at the Museum of the Bible, you're going to be disappointed.

01:42- What?

01:43- You might have actually been disappointed

01:44while they were still there.

01:46- Just as part of your general disappointment

01:49with the whole experience.

01:51- With the museum, with the whole museum, yeah.

01:53- Yeah, yeah.

01:54- I like any show where we can start off

01:57by sort of pooping on the green families failed.

02:02- Paul.

02:03- Attempted anyway.

02:04- So a little, a little inside baseball here.

02:08I don't know if anybody gets in trouble for this,

02:10but I went to a Bible translation conference

02:14several years ago, going on probably eight or nine years ago.

02:18And I was talking with some folks,

02:20and Bible translation is significantly funded by the Greens

02:25through a variety of different organizations.

02:28And what some of the consultants were telling me

02:32was that it is widely known

02:36that the Greens believe, or somebody among them,

02:40and I'm just passing on what I was told as an outsider,

02:46that the idea is as soon as the Bible is translated

02:51into every language in the world,

02:53that will catalyze the second coming.

02:56- Yeah, I mean, I think that that funding is,

02:59is that talked about in the--

03:01- Some of that is mentioned in here.

03:03I mean, this isn't an honorable book.

03:04- What's the book for those of us who can't,

03:05for those listeners who can't see what's happening?

03:07- Oh, this is Candida Moss

03:10and Joel Baden's book on the Green Family Bible Nation.

03:16- The United States of Hobby Lobby,

03:17which is just, the title is just--

03:21- Apparently the hobby that they're engaged in

03:23is bringing about the apocalypse.

03:25So that's a nice hobby. - That's a big part of it.

03:27It is, it's-- - And that's a fun hobby.

03:29I've had other folks who also work in Bible translation

03:32tell me that one of the huge concerns is that

03:34the funding is all going to just pumping out more languages,

03:39and they're not like doing all the work

03:41that goes along with it, like literacy programs,

03:45like more research for translators

03:48so that they can ensure that their translations are better,

03:51all that kind of stuff.

03:52It's just pump out more translations, go, go, go.

03:55And in the hopes that they will bring the second coming,

04:00as an even faster thief in the night.

04:04So-- - All right.

04:05- Let's get off of the Hobby Lobby Green Family

04:09and get into some more interesting stuff.

04:11Kip Davis, thank you for joining us.

04:13- You do give me an opportunity to say

04:15get off the Hobby Lobby Horse.

04:17- Oh! - Cause that was--

04:18- Okay, okay, okay. - It was right there.

04:20- Opportunity missed, I apologize.

04:22I'm excited, I want to talk about some scrolls.

04:28- Yeah.

04:29- I know very little, I think a lot of people,

04:32the world is kind of this place where like everybody knows

04:36that the Dead Sea Scrolls are a thing.

04:39And then all of that-- - More or less.

04:41- You know, they don't know what it is though.

04:44Like, I think there's a significant portion

04:46of the population who are like, oh yeah, Dead Sea Scrolls.

04:49What is it?

04:50I don't know, I have no idea.

04:52So-- - That is a step ahead though

04:56of my oldest son's kindergartener.

04:59I think it was his first grade teacher.

05:02When I had come back from the University of Manchester

05:06where I was doing my PhD, my family was here in Canada

05:10and I was going back and forth quite a bit.

05:13I picked him up from school,

05:15and it was the first time I had met her

05:18and introduced myself, shook her hand, you know,

05:22and she says to me, she goes, yeah,

05:24she says, so I really just have to ask.

05:28So are they actually squirrels?

05:32(laughing)

05:37- I think there's a children's or young adult book series

05:42that's Dead Sea Squirrels.

05:44Yeah.

05:45(laughing)

05:46- I love it though.

05:47- Awesome.

05:48- Yeah, all right, so the Dead Sea Squirrels,

05:52what we're on about is,

05:54so in the Coom Run had a lot of interesting rodents,

06:00I assume, and that's why we're not in these squirrels.

06:03- I'm sure they did, I'm sure they did.

06:05Well, so for those people like me

06:08who don't have a lot of knowledge,

06:09can we start by just giving a background

06:12on what these are, where they were found,

06:15when they were found, just give us the broad swath

06:19of what we're talking about here.

06:23- Yeah, absolutely.

06:24So I'm not Dan's and my former teacher,

06:29the great late Peter W. Flint,

06:33but he would tell you that the Dead Sea Squirrels

06:36were the greatest archeological discovery of all time.

06:40- They are pretty--

06:43- They are in South African accent as well.

06:44- Yes, yeah, I can't do it.

06:46So I'm not even gonna try, but--

06:48- Nobody can do South African, that's impossible.

06:50(laughing)

06:52- So they're pretty great though.

06:55The Dead Sea Squirrels are a set, a series,

07:00I suppose, of Jewish manuscripts predominantly written

07:05in Hebrew with some Aramaic and a handful in Greek

07:10that were discovered in the Judean desert,

07:15which is just south and east of the city of Jerusalem.

07:20The vast majority of the scrolls,

07:25I'd need to say at the outset,

07:27people get confused about this.

07:30The Dead Sea Squirrels technically refer

07:32to any discoveries of manuscripts in this region,

07:36all the way from the further north in places

07:41like Wadi Tseer or, yeah, let's say Wadi Tseer,

07:47down south to sites like Nachoh, Havera and Mutabat,

07:53and even Masada scrolls from Masada you could consider

07:58part of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

08:00But when most people think about the Dead Sea Scrolls,

08:03if they think about the Dead Sea Scrolls,

08:05they're thinking about the massive collection

08:08of manuscripts that was discovered in 11 caves

08:11that are within a one and a half kilometer radius

08:15of a site called Qumran.

08:17It's a site of ruins that scholars believe was occupied

08:23by Jewish ascetics, basically.

08:28Josephus and Pliny the Younger tell us

08:31that these people were affiliated with the Essenes,

08:36a religious sect of Judaism,

08:38who was basically out in the middle of the desert,

08:42waiting for the end of the world,

08:44waiting for the last days when Yahweh

08:47would finally come in power and destroy the Romans

08:51and elevate. - To need a talk to the Green family.

08:54- Yes, right.

08:55I mean, they were the greens before the greens.

08:57Actually, they were a separatist group

09:01that considered the priesthood that was in control

09:04of the temple to be a legitimate.

09:06And so they were more like the Bundis in that regard.

09:10They were like, we're going to live by ourselves

09:13in the mountains and yeah.

09:16- Yeah, very interestingly, somebody asked me

09:18the question this week because I did a video

09:22about sacrifices in the Old Testament.

09:27And somebody had asked me the question

09:30about Jewish ideas regarding sacrifice

09:35in the second temple period and moving forward.

09:39And I had the opportunity to tell him one of the interesting

09:43things about the writers and the collectors

09:46of the Dead Sea Scrolls is that they came out of

09:51the temple establishment in Jerusalem.

09:55They were disenfranchised, but their expectation was

10:00that the great eschatological temple

10:04was going to be established in the same place

10:07as they expected the Jerusalem temple to basically be eliminated.

10:15But in the meantime, of course, they can't perform

10:18any sacrifices, but the people who lived in Qumran

10:23who wrote and collected the Dead Sea Scrolls

10:25thought that they entered into worship on a regular basis

10:30into the eschatological temple with God.

10:35And they worshiped alongside of the angels.

10:38We have a series of texts called the songs

10:41of the Sabbath Sacrifices where they explain in some detail

10:45the procedures of what scholars tend to think

10:49they undertook on a regular basis.

10:54- They're kind of a mystical stream of tradition.

10:57- Yeah, that was hard.

10:59- That we're transcending this realm to commune

11:02with God and the angels in the temple.

11:05- This also helps to explain a lot of,

11:09they were also quite obsessed

11:12with ritual purity within this group.

11:17And part of the reason for that was because

11:21their expectation was that they were regularly

11:25in the company of divine beings.

11:28So it's really, really important to make sure

11:31that you're dressed your best.

11:34- Yeah, well, you know, companies coming over,

11:38you wanna be, you wanna be in, you know,

11:40you want the carpet to be clean and all that sort of thing.

11:42- Absolutely.

11:43But so I guess, sorry, I got off in a bit of attention there.

11:48You asked about the scrolls.

11:49What's really, for me at least what's most exciting

11:54is the scrolls themselves.

11:57The manuscripts that were discovered in these 11 caves,

12:01this was back between 1947 and 1953.

12:05Most of the discoveries were made by members

12:09of the Tatamira Bedouin tribe,

12:11nomadic sheep herders that circulate through the region.

12:17Archaeologists did discover some of the manuscripts,

12:20but most of the caves ended up getting scoured

12:24by these people ahead of time.

12:29- Now, Kip, I wonder if you could clear something up for me.

12:32I have heard before and people hear a lot of rumors

12:34about the Dead Sea Scrolls,

12:36but I have heard that the archaeologists

12:39who were kind of curating the gathering of the scrolls

12:42offered to, or they were paying these Bedouin groups

12:47by the fragments, which was a big mistake.

12:52- Yeah, oh, I can immediately see some problems

12:52- Oh, yes.

12:55popping up in that.

12:56- Because it incentivized them.

12:58- You'd see what's coming.

12:59- To fragment things that they found.

13:03- This is a true story.

13:05- Okay.

13:06- So early on, the Bedouin were scouring the desert

13:11and finding these manuscripts

13:15and then bringing them to an antiquities dealer

13:19by the name of Cando.

13:21And Iskander Khalil Shahin is his name,

13:26but everybody called him Cando.

13:29And then he would, he basically acted as the middleman

13:34between the scholars then and the people

13:37who would find the scrolls.

13:39And of course, because they're just excellent

13:42at doing business, right?

13:44They agreed on a price for per fragment of material

13:49and the pieces kept getting smaller and smaller

13:54as they were coming in.

13:56They soon settled on, they realized what was going on.

14:01Scholars oftentimes don't, they're not on the ball

14:06right away with everything.

14:08- Takes a few minutes sometimes, but--

14:09- Their focus is different.

14:10They have a different focus.

14:11- It's a little bit, yeah, yeah.

14:13So, but they eventually settled on a price per square centimeter

14:18of material that they brought in.

14:21And I personally think too, this is not something,

14:24this is something a bit anecdotal,

14:27but it plays into some of the stuff we'll talk about later.

14:29I tend to think as well, importantly,

14:33they set a price per square centimeter

14:37of inscribed material.

14:40So, I tend to think, and we have some documentation

14:43for this, that pieces of manuscripts, pieces of leather

14:48or parchment, most of the scrolls are made of vellum,

14:52of parchment, but small pieces of these that came in

14:56that didn't have any writing on them,

14:58but were part of a handle sheet

15:00or part of a margin of the scroll.

15:02I suspect may not have even been purchased

15:06or had been carelessly discarded or put away somewhere.

15:11We have some documentation from Roland Devaux

15:15who was overseeing the project when it began.

15:20He talked about setting aside

15:23some of these larger, uninscribed pieces

15:25because he had planned on doing an investigation

15:30with regards to scarble practices or something like that.

15:37But nobody knows what happened

15:40to these uninscribed bits or where they went.

15:43And that's honestly, one of the problems

15:46that plagues scrolls research today, and it's pretty consistent.

15:50One of my colleagues at the University of Ochter

15:53or Stynuseness has been running a project now

15:56for the last three or four years, I think,

15:59where one of the purposes and goals of this project

16:03is to locate missing fragments, fragments that we have

16:08in many of the thousands of photographs

16:12that have been taken over the past 70 years

16:16but are no longer in the inventory

16:20at the Israel Antiquities Authority or the Shrine of the Book

16:23or any of the other places where scrolls, manuscripts now reside.

16:28So sorry, this is just tangents galores.

16:35- No, no, this is good, this is good.

16:38One thing that we haven't, oh, sorry,

16:39keep going with what you were saying.

16:41- Well, I was gonna say, is there a worry

16:44that there might be some writing

16:47that newer technology might be able to reveal

16:50on some of these or is it more a concern

16:52for just filling in all the gaps in our understanding?

16:57Is there a hope that maybe some of these pieces

17:01that are not inscribed on might be able

17:02to connect inscribed pieces?

17:05What might be some of the deliverables

17:07of getting as many of these fragments back as possible?

17:11- Well, the uninscribed ones in particular are just any,

17:16so for my real interest,

17:20but my focus as a scholar tends to be

17:23on scribal practices, manuscript construction,

17:27manuscript function, something that some of us

17:33like to call material philology.

17:36And for a person like me,

17:38even the uninscribed bits of a manuscript

17:41are intensely interesting

17:43because they do provide us information

17:45about the scrolls as artifacts,

17:48as archeological objects of study.

17:52They're valuable not just for the texts that they contain,

17:55but in their own right.

17:56The manuscripts themselves reveal

18:00a tremendous amount of information to us

18:03about the people who made them and the purposes behind that.

18:07So this is the kind of stuff that I'm interested in.

18:12- The kind of stuff that is hard to write a grant proposal for.

18:16- True enough, I wanna go looking for

18:19and studying all these, all these...

18:22- These blank pages.

18:23- Yeah, give me money to find blank pages, please.

18:28- Yes, yes.

18:29(upbeat music)

18:33- So talk to us a little bit about, I'm sorry,

18:36I'm still on the, I still wanna figure out

18:39what the heck these things are.

18:40So you mentioned that some of them are talking about

18:43like the practices of the people who had them at the time,

18:47but there's also, but that's not like,

18:50so what people are mostly interested in, right?

18:53- I'm still trying to explain

18:55what these things are all about.

18:56- Yeah, let's get back into it.

18:59- So we have this massive collection of manuscript fragments.

19:04The numbers are, there's not a precise number.

19:09We're talking about tens of thousands

19:12of individual fragments.

19:13Most of them are quite small,

19:15the size of a credit card, sometimes even smaller.

19:19We have a handful of complete intact manuscripts,

19:24things like the Great Isaiah score,

19:27which is probably the most famous

19:30of all the Dead Sea Scrolls,

19:31is a completely intact copy of Isaiah

19:34that measures 27 feet long.

19:38- Whoa.

19:39- It's all 66 chapters from chapter one

19:43through to chapter 66 in, I believe it's 58 columns of text,

19:48is it 13, 13 sheets, all stitched together.

19:53But most of them don't look like that.

19:55Most of them are tiny little pieces

19:57because they've been sitting in caves for thousands of years.

19:59They've been eaten away at by small animals

20:04and they've deteriorated.

20:08And as such, we're left with these fragments

20:12of all sorts of different sizes,

20:13all mixed up and bunched up together

20:17that scholars have spent the better part of the last 70 years

20:21since their discovery, trying to piece together

20:24and trying to figure out what's there.

20:27- So among these 10,000 fragments,

20:29we figure that there are probably somewhere around 600

20:34individual scrolls that belonged to,

20:40most believe that they all belong to this group

20:44that lived at this site in Qumran.

20:48- Although the data do suggest

20:49that many of these scrolls were brought in from elsewhere.

20:52- Oh yeah, definitely.

20:53- They're not produced here, but come from around.

20:56- Exactly, and I would even say there's some question

20:59about how closely related all 11 caves are to one another.

21:04And there's open questions as well

21:09about whether all the 11 caves were serving the same purpose.

21:13One of my colleagues, Joan Taylor,

21:17who's out at King's College in London,

21:19has forwarded some really good ideas, I think,

21:24about cave one, in particular.

21:27The caves are all numbered in the order

21:29in which they were discovered.

21:30And cave 11, because a number of the scrolls

21:34were discovered inside of these earthen jars,

21:38she thinks that these were possibly

21:43like ancient forms of a Ganesa.

21:48A Ganesa is like a, it's like a depository

21:52for your manuscripts in a Jewish synagogue

21:55that have worn out and are no longer suitable

21:58for public usage.

21:59You can't destroy them or throw them away.

22:01They have to be carefully, respectfully deposited

22:06and retired.

22:07She thinks maybe a couple of the caves

22:10could have been something like that.

22:13The most prominent of the caves cave four,

22:17which is located literally right at the Qumran site.

22:21It's with a hundred meters of the ruins themselves.

22:25Dan has been to Qumran.

22:27I'm sure he's been right to the wadi edge

22:30and seen the cave for himself.

22:33- Usually when you see photos of Qumran,

22:36what you see is a little kind of ridge jutting out

22:40and there's a little hole right in the middle of the ridge

22:42and that's cave four.

22:44And Qumran is right across that little gully from it.

22:47And so there's a lookout point where you can just--

22:50- Exactly.

22:51- And look at the hole in the wall.

22:54And significantly, this is a man-made cave.

22:54- That's right.

22:57So, I mean, the region, the area there,

23:01is just honeycombed by thousands of these natural caves.

23:05This one is man-made.

23:07And within this cave is where scholars discovered found,

23:12or I should say the Bedouin,

23:13found the vast majority of material.

23:17It's, you know, over 500 of the manuscripts

23:21come from just this one cave.

23:23So, the thought generally is that this was probably

23:28almost like a library.

23:31This individual cave cave four,

23:34there's even some elements within the cave.

23:39There's divots and holes in the wall

23:42that suggest maybe they supported shelving units

23:45where more scrolls were brought in and deposited

23:50and retrieved.

23:52So, yeah, all that to say,

23:56we have open questions about a lot

23:58of what's going on here, right?

24:00We're not even sure.

24:01I think it's probably a good bet just based on proximity

24:05that the caves belong together.

24:07But there's even still some open questions about that.

24:12Were these caves, sorry, just to sort of paint the picture,

24:15were these caves big enough for a person

24:17to stand up straight in or are they like,

24:20are they little caves that get out of kind of...

24:23- So, I've only been in three of them.

24:26And so, yeah, like cave four, yeah,

24:29you can stand up in cave four and cave one,

24:32cave 11 is more difficult.

24:34But yeah, and some of these other caves

24:40look like they were places that people just in a rush.

24:45As the story goes, the theory is that in 70,

24:50in the year 70 CE, the scenes were there

24:56for almost 200 years.

24:59And then in the year 70, the Romans sucked Jerusalem,

25:04destroyed the temple and then started making their way down

25:09to the west and south along the shore of the Dead Sea

25:13to Goda Masada to take care of the last

25:18of the rebels who were holed up there.

25:21And on the way down to Masada,

25:23they just took a little pit stop at Qumran,

25:26demolished and burned the place and then went on their way.

25:30And the people living at Qumran saw them coming

25:35undoubtedly from some distance freaked out

25:39about the fact that the Roman armies bearing down

25:41upon our little settlement.

25:42So, yeah, probably stashed bunches

25:48of these manuscripts away and ran for their lives,

25:52hoping maybe they would come back to collect them

25:55and clearly none of them made it back.

25:58- Yeah.

25:59- And we actually have, I'll just say this one more thing

26:01about that.

26:03Some of the manuscripts actually have clear slices

26:08right through them that were made by like a sword,

26:13just hacking through and cutting the material itself.

26:18- Now, you mentioned the scenes being in the area

26:22for around 200 years.

26:24What are the earliest, and most of these manuscripts

26:27are dated paleographically, maybe some through carbon dating,

26:32but what are some of the earliest dates

26:35and we put the cutoff right around 68 to 70 CE.

26:40That's when the most recent ones were made,

26:42but when are our earliest ones dated?

26:46- So the oldest ones potentially date back to as early

26:50as 250 BCE.

26:52That's probably a little ambitious.

26:55I would say safely 200.

26:58- Okay.

26:59- And we have a handful of these manuscripts.

27:03We've got copies of the book of Jeremiah,

27:05the book of Samuel, the book of Exodus,

27:07that old date, date back this early.

27:11I think maybe even a copy of the book of Enoch.

27:14I have to double check that.

27:17And here's the significance, or maybe not the significance,

27:22but one of the first big significances of this discovery

27:27was that between 200 to 300 of these manuscripts

27:34are copies of books that are in our Old Testament.

27:39And within this collection,

27:46there's at least a fragment of every single book

27:51that appears in the Old Testament,

27:54except for the book of Esther.

27:56Technically also the book of Neomiah,

28:01but scholars assume it was there

28:04because as Neomiah was collected along with Ezra,

28:08and we have Ezra there,

28:10so scholars think possibly also,

28:13probably also Neomiah.

28:15And the other reason this is significant

28:17is because prior to this discovery in 1947,

28:21the oldest Hebrew manuscripts we had of the Old Testament

28:27came from medieval codices, the Leningrad Codex,

28:32the Aleppo Codex, which date to like the 10th century.

28:359th, 10th century.

28:37- Yeah, right around 900, 800, 800.

28:41Now, were there, did we have fragments of other things?

28:44'Cause Aleppo used to be complete,

28:47and now it's pretty fragmentary in the Pentateuch,

28:50and then the Leningrad Codex is the oldest

28:53complete manuscript of the entire Hebrew Bible.

28:55Is there anything between the Dead Sea Scrolls

28:57and Aleppo that is just fragmentary?

29:00- Just a handful, no, there's a couple of things,

29:03like there's, most prominently, the Nash papyrus

29:08is a papyrus sheet, no one can see my hands,

29:12or only half of you can see my hands.

29:14It's about 10 centimeters by 20 centimeters,

29:17it dates to probably 100, maybe 150 BCE,

29:22and it's a collection of the 10 commandments, basically,

29:28with some interesting variation in it.

29:30But this was like, this was importantly,

29:33not a copy of a biblical book, quote unquote.

29:37This was just a single sheet of like the 10 commandments.

29:42So is that a biblical text?

29:44I'm not even sure, right?

29:46So the exciting thing about this was that

29:50really the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls

29:53pushed textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible back

29:58in one discovery, like a thousand years.

30:02And within the scrolls, too, we have discovered

30:05multiple copies of individual biblical books.

30:09There's fragments from 22 individual manuscripts

30:14which contained parts of the book of Isaiah.

30:17There's 30, I think it's 32 copies of manuscripts

30:21that contain parts of Deuteronomy.

30:2437 that contain parts of Psalms.

30:28So they had clearly a strong interest in the Bible.

30:33- Well, and you mentioned Enoch earlier,

30:39if I recall there were, what, 14 different manuscripts

30:42of Enoch?

30:43- Yeah, I think Enoch was the most other

30:47than Genesis, Psalms, Deuteronomy, and Isaiah, wasn't it?

30:51- Exactly, yeah.

30:52It raises all sorts of interesting questions.

30:55Just not, I mean, right away about the text

31:01of the Hebrew Bible, the text of the individual books,

31:03but also about ideas regarding biblical authority

31:08or scripture, the development of canon.

31:13All of this stuff is wrapped up in there.

31:17- And the inviolability of the text,

31:19'cause you have these multiple manuscripts,

31:22people are handling multiple different manuscripts

31:24that have significant differences between them.

31:26- That's really the wild thing.

31:28- And they seem to be okay with this.

31:30- Totally, 'cause, and I'm sure you've talked

31:32about this before, the book of Jeremiah,

31:35famously differs between the Greek translation

31:40of the book of Jeremiah in the Septuagint

31:43and the Hebrew version that survives

31:47in the Masoretic text and the Leningrad Codex

31:51- So that's considered the authoritative version

31:55of the Hebrew Bible.

31:56Your translations are gonna primarily be based

31:59off the Leningrad Codex, which is part

32:01of the Masoretic tradition.

32:03- Yeah, so that one is 13% larger,

32:08longer than the Septuagint version,

32:12which is substantial when you're talking about,

32:15I've actually done the word count,

32:16I don't remember it offhand, but it's about 55,000 words.

32:19- Yeah, wow, you know, it's a substantial difference.

32:24And then of course, the Greek text,

32:29the Septuagint version is also

32:32in a dramatically different arrangement.

32:35And when you do a careful comparison

32:36between the two versions, the Masoretic version

32:39that survives in the Hebrew

32:41and the Septuagint version that survives in the Greek,

32:43you can see very obvious theological programs

32:48that work in terms of updating

32:51and changing and altering the material.

32:55So, and the amazing thing about this is

33:00that yes, within the Dead Sea Scrolls,

33:03there are six copies of the Book of Jeremiah

33:05and two of those follow the text

33:09and the arrangement of the Septuagint in Hebrew.

33:14- So, you know, one of the things I actually ran into,

33:19ran into a pastor once while I was still an MA student

33:24who asked me when he found out that I worked on

33:28on, I was doing work in biblical studies.

33:32He asked me, he goes, so tell me something.

33:34He says, I can't figure this out.

33:38How is it the Greek translators of Jeremiah

33:43who managed to get it so wrong?

33:46You know, and I've thought it's just that's a common thought.

33:53It's a common idea that, you know, not even the,

33:58not just the text is authoritative or inspired or inerrant,

34:02but you have to have like the right version

34:05and everybody just sort of picks their favorite, right?

34:09- And we have a lot of differences,

34:11even in the arrangement in Samuel and Kings as well.

34:15In fact, I think some of the most significant differences

34:17are in some of the witnesses to Samuel

34:20and in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which suggests

34:23quite a bit of textual fluidity,

34:25but tolerated textual fluidity.

34:27They didn't seem to have an issue.

34:31- No, it just doesn't seem to be a question

34:34that was raised on a regular basis.

34:38And we have other, like, no, go ahead Dan.

34:40- I was just gonna say, can you talk a little bit

34:42about some of the difference,

34:43like what kinds of differences are we talking about?

34:46Like what are the, talk to me about

34:48some of the most significant things

34:51that surprise you about, you know,

34:56first of all, as you're talking about,

34:58differences between scrolls from that era

35:02and then now differences between that

35:03and what we're used to reading in our translations or whatever.

35:08- Okay, yeah.

35:11So I mean, I think in terms of specific examples,

35:16probably the most prominent one

35:18would be in one of the copies of Samuel.

35:24I believe it's in first Samuel, chapter 11.

35:29There is a large expansion in the manuscript found,

35:34one of the manuscripts found at Qumran

35:36in the story of Nakhash,

35:39the king, it's the Ammonites, isn't it, Dan?

35:44King of the Ammonites.

35:45- Yeah, yeah, where we've got this weird story

35:48where something has happened

35:51and suddenly a demand is being made.

35:53- Yes, something has happened.

35:55The King of the Ammonites, Nakhash has showed up

35:59at Yavish Gilean and basically threatening the city

36:04and threatening to put out the eye

36:07of every man in the city.

36:10And it is, it's a bit of a jarring interruption

36:13into the narrative there.

36:15And prior to the discovery of this manuscript,

36:20I believe it's for Q Samuel, A.

36:23There was no information from any of the other manuscripts

36:28north from the Septuagint about what's going on here

36:32and lo and behold, we find this text

36:36which has literally an entire paragraph of material,

36:41of explanatory information about what was going on.

36:46And do you have the text there, Dan?

36:50- I'm pulling it up right now.

36:53Yeah, so I'm looking at if anybody would like to see,

36:57you can find English translations

36:59of the biblical and the non-biblical Dead Sea Scrolls.

37:03There's also a book called the biblical Qumran Scrolls,

37:06Transcriptions and Textual Variants

37:08with where if you're really interested

37:11in this kind of stuff, this presents the Hebrew text

37:14and then there's a critical apparatus

37:16that presents all of the differences between the text

37:21and the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Septuagint

37:25and the Masoretic text and all that kind of stuff.

37:28- Oh, here it is.

37:29All right, so it's first Samuel chapter 10 verse 27.

37:34I'll just read, this is the NRSB.

37:37I'll start here in verse 26.

37:39It says, "Saul also went to his home in Givia

37:43and with him went warriors whose hearts God had touched,

37:47but some worthless fellows said, 'How can this man save us?'

37:50They despised him and brought him no present,

37:52but he held his peace."

37:54And then the text goes on to say about a month later,

37:57Nahash, the Ammonite went up and besieged Yabbish Gilead

38:00and all the men of Yabbish said to Nahash,

38:03"Make a treaty with us and we will serve you."

38:04But Nahash, the Ammonite said to them,

38:07"On this condition, I'll make the treaty with you,

38:09namely that I gouge out everyone's right eye

38:12and thus put to disgrace upon all of Israel."

38:15And you're kind of looking at that and going,

38:16"Wow, this guy is triggered."

38:19- Yeah, that's extreme.

38:21- That's not a good deal, he's not making a good deal.

38:24So here in 4Q-51, we have this,

38:29the text doesn't break like it did

38:36in the translation I read.

38:40It goes on to say,

38:42prior to the introduction of Nahash, the Ammonite,

38:45it says, "Now, Nahash, King of the Ammonites,

38:48had been grievously oppressing the Gadites

38:51and the Rubenites, he would gouge out the right eye

38:54of each of them and would not grant Israel a deliverer."

38:57No one was left of the Israelites across the Jordan,

39:00who's right eye, Nahash, the King of the Ammonites,

39:03had not gouged out, but there were 7,000 men

39:06who had escaped from the Ammonites

39:08and had entered Yavish Gilea.

39:11So, I mean, there's a whole chunk of new information in there

39:16that nobody had seen.

39:24In hundreds, maybe 1,000 years or more

39:28before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

39:30We had some hints about this,

39:31'cause I think Josephus relates this story.

39:35I can't recall for sure, I'd have to go back and look.

39:38So that's maybe one of the most prominent examples,

39:41but I'll talk about one that I quite like

39:46and it's not an obvious one.

39:50But one of my favorite things about the Dead Sea Scrolls

39:55is in how they inform us about the development

40:02of the texts of the Hebrew Bible,

40:04about the development of scripture.

40:07And Christian apologists are very fond

40:11of pointing to the Dead Sea Scrolls

40:14and specifically pointing to copies of the Book of Daniel

40:19that were discovered in the Dead Sea Scrolls

40:21as proof of the fact that this is a book

40:25that must have been written by Daniel himself

40:29living in Babylon in the sixth century

40:32because traditional theories,

40:37is this something you guys have talked about before?

40:39- Yeah, we did a show about the Book of Daniel.

40:41- Yeah, okay.

40:42- But it's never hurts to give a refresher.

40:47- Yeah, sure.

40:48- Sort of thing.

40:49- So like just very briefly,

40:51scholars are uniformly convinced

40:57that the Book of Daniel was not completed

41:01until well into the second century

41:04after the Hasmonean revolt

41:08and that the prophecies in the Hebrew portion,

41:11beginning in chapter eight through to 12,

41:16were all written after the fact

41:18and, you know, set in the mouth of Daniel

41:23as if they were predictions of the future.

41:26This is no.

41:28So, you know, the date of the Book of Daniel tends to be,

41:31that were at least the,

41:32these parts of the Book of Daniel

41:34and the completion of the Book of Daniel

41:35tend to be around the 160s.

41:38So with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls,

41:41there are several copies of manuscripts

41:46containing the Book of Daniel.

41:48And many Christian apologists pointed to this right away

41:52and were very excited about the fact

41:54that these manuscripts were there

41:57because they concluded it could not,

41:59it was just not possible

42:02that the Book of Daniel could be so widely circulated

42:05and so popular in such a short period of time

42:09from the time of its composition to the time

42:12of its circulation.

42:14Now, I'm not going to make any judgments

42:17about the quality of that argument,

42:19but this is how often Christian apologists

42:25will tend to talk about the Book of Daniel.

42:27But you need to, when you do some work,

42:30when you look into what's actually there,

42:33from the Book of Daniel and the Dead Sea Scrolls,

42:36this paints a fascinating picture

42:39because yes, we have eight copies

42:42of individual Daniel manuscripts in the collection.

42:46And yes, two of these copies look like they're all fragmentary,

42:51but in terms of how those scholars work

42:54and the way that we can reconstruct the material,

42:57we're pretty convinced that two of them

42:59did contain the complete Book.

43:02Now, those manuscripts are dated

43:06to at best the early first century CE,

43:11or probably closer to the middle of the first century CE.

43:15So right away, these manuscripts are like up to 200 years

43:20already removed from the completion of the Book of Daniel.

43:25What's really fascinating is the rest of the material,

43:28I think, because the rest of the manuscripts,

43:32when you attempt to reconstruct them,

43:35you end up with manuscripts

43:38that only contain portions of the Book of Daniel.

43:42And the Book of Daniel's funny because half of it's written

43:46in Aramaic, and the other half is written in Hebrew.

43:49And in terms of their content, they're quite different.

43:54The Hebrew text of Daniel are these wild apocalyptic visions.

43:58The Aramaic texts are these super fun stories

44:02about these clever Jewish exiles living in Babylon

44:07and always getting the better of that goofy King Nebuchadnezzar

44:13or the person. - Old man Nebuchadnezzar.

44:18- Oh yeah, he's getting it.

44:20So anyways, so we have these two parts

44:26and fascinatingly, what we find is a couple

44:30of these manuscripts look like they were just copies

44:34of Aramaic tales.

44:37Some of these manuscripts look like they were just copies

44:42of a Hebrew vision or maybe two or three

44:47of these Hebrew visions in the final part.

44:51So as a scholar of the scrolls and somebody who works

44:56with the material and is interested in questions

44:58of development and authority and such.

45:01I look at that and I go, this is so obvious.

45:04I mean, we have, you know, in the first century BC,

45:08in, you know, maybe the early second century BC,

45:12we have physical examples of what the Book of Daniel

45:17looked like before it became our biblical Book of Daniel.

45:24We have examples of it in the pieces

45:27that it was probably circulated as for some time.

45:32And in addition to that, we also have other manuscripts

45:37which feature this figure, Daniel, written in Aramaic

45:42as part of these tales of him serving

45:47in the Babylonian court, but do not appear

45:53in our Bibles.

45:54It's wild. - That's fascinating.

45:58That would be to use the documentary hypothesis

46:01as kind of an analogy.

46:04It would be like stumbling across J

46:07while it was circulating independently

46:09and D while it was circulating independently.

46:12And then something else that may have been

46:15L-M-N-O or Q that never got worked into the Pentateuch.

46:19It's, and of course, because everything is so fragmentary,

46:23we can't know for sure exactly

46:25what the full manuscript looked like.

46:27But at least the data point in that direction

46:29that it looks like we may have pieces

46:31of pre-Daniel traditions floating around,

46:35preserved at Kumran.

46:36Wow, that's incredible.

46:38(upbeat music)

46:40- Maybe one of the best known of these unknown Aramaic tales

46:46is a manuscript called the Pervnabonitis.

46:49And it's just a couple of fragments.

46:52And it's weird because it's written in the first person

46:56and it's Nebuchadnezzar speaking

46:58about what a great guy he is and how amazing he is.

47:01And look at this beautiful city that I've built.

47:03There's nobody like me on earth.

47:05And then suddenly God speaks to him and says,

47:07you know, you're a prideful asshole.

47:09Sorry, can I say that on your part?

47:11We'll allow it.

47:12There's one time. - All right, all right.

47:15You know, I am, you know, I'm gonna put you in your place.

47:19I'm going to reduce you to a beast

47:21and you're going to go wander out in the fields

47:23for seven years until you learn your lesson.

47:27And of course, this happens very interestingly.

47:31There's a couple of fragments of this manuscript

47:34that scholars identify as the Pervnabonitis

47:37where the text of the story looks really similar to this

47:42but with some interesting differences.

47:46It's not Nebuchadnezzar speaking in the first person.

47:49It's the last king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezz,

47:54speaking in the first person.

47:57And he's speaking about how he was afflicted

48:00with an illness for seven years.

48:04An illness so bad that he ended up having to be removed

48:07from the city of Babylon.

48:09He couldn't even be a Babylon anymore.

48:11And then he tells us in this personal account of his

48:15that an anonymous Jewish magician came and helped him

48:20and healed him and praise God, the only God,

48:28the God of the Jews forever.

48:30So, you know, scholars look at something like that

48:33and they say, hmm, sure looks an awful lot

48:37like this story of Nebuchadnezzar except, you know,

48:40maybe somebody decided to update the story

48:43and swap out the wildly unpopular Nebuchadnezzis

48:48and largely, you know, unknown by this time

48:52probably Nebuchadnezzar is for, you know,

48:55a famous guy like Nebuchadnezzar, so.

48:59- Interesting.

49:00- Now, I just wanted to bring up my favorite variant ring

49:04from the Dead Sea Scrolls.

49:06- Yes, please.

49:06- A lot of my research is on conceptualizations of deity

49:10and particularly the early history of Adonai

49:12God of Israel and their distinction from L,

49:17Deuteronomy 32, 8, and 9, very, very famously,

49:21we have 4Q Deuteronomy J, one of the fragments

49:24from the Dead Sea Scrolls that was discovered.

49:27That's only a few words, but we can tell

49:29it is definitely Deuteronomy 32 verse 8,

49:32there's nothing else it could be.

49:34And in the Masoretic text, if you pull out many Bibles today,

49:38these days there are a lot that are correcting this,

49:40but it talks about how the Most High separated the peoples

49:45divided up the nations according to the number

49:47of the sons of Israel.

49:49And then you go look in the Septuagint,

49:50it says according to the number of the angels of God.

49:53And this is a head scratcher, but some scholars were like,

49:57you know, the Septuagint translators like to take gods

50:00or sons of God and render at angels of God.

50:03So maybe what Deuteronomy 32, 8 originally said

50:07was according to the number of the sons of God.

50:10So that was a hypothesis.

50:12And then we discovered 4Q Deuteronomy J,

50:14which reads precisely that according to the number

50:17of the sons of God, which helps us make a lot of connections

50:22between the mythos of this time period

50:26and some earlier literature, particularly

50:28in the Eucharitic text, but elsewhere in Deuteronomy 32,

50:32we've also got 4Q Deuteronomy Q, which is verse 43,

50:37there's this statement about sing heavens

50:42or something like that, I'll have vengeance on my people.

50:45And the Septuagint actually has a very long verse

50:49where it kind of doubles up about saying,

50:51you know, strengthen the angels of God

50:53and worship him all you sons of God.

50:56And then we found among the Dead Sea Scrolls,

50:59the reading, worship him all you gods,

51:02exactly what we find in Psalm 97, seven.

51:06Probably the source for the composition of Psalm 97, seven.

51:10But it seems like the Septuagint probably

51:13had two variant readings of this text

51:15and was like, let's keep them both.

51:17And that's what ended up in the Greek translation.

51:20And then the Masoretic text was uncomfortable

51:23with whatever reading they had or someone before them

51:26changed it and we get this kind of milk toasty passage,

51:31but we can restore what was most likely original

51:34or God is telling the gods to,

51:37or somebody is telling the gods to worship the God of Israel.

51:41- That's right.

51:42- Which I think just fascinating.

51:44It's so amazing that we have those things

51:48and it makes you wonder what was eaten by a mouse

51:52or what was destroyed in the process of excavation

51:57or what just immediately turned to dust

52:00when it was exposed to the air or something like that.

52:02Or as Bedouins were ripping up documents

52:07into smaller things.

52:08- Or, you know, there's a famous,

52:10there is a famous black and white photograph

52:13that was snapped sometime in the '40s or the '50s

52:16of G. Lancaster Harding who was the director

52:21of the Palestinian Authority,

52:24the Antiquities Authority at the time

52:25that the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.

52:28And he is pouring over some manuscript fragments

52:32studying them very intently.

52:35And he's got a cigarette hanging out of his mouth

52:39with the ash on it like an inch and a half long,

52:44like it's barely holding on there.

52:46It's just about to drop and incinerate the whole thing.

52:50Yeah, it's wild.

52:53You know, I was gonna say one other thing

52:55about those two manuscripts down.

52:57One of the things that I particularly like about them

53:02and this is because I'm like one of these weird

53:07manuscript, "Scrabble Practices Guy."

53:11These two copies of the Book of Deuteronomy

53:13are not copies of the Book of Deuteronomy.

53:17They're smaller manuscripts.

53:19They are, so 4Q Deuteronomy J, the first one,

53:24contains text from, see if I can get this right,

53:29it's Deuteronomy chapter five, and then Exodus chapter 12,

53:34and then the whole Song of Moses, and that's it, right?

53:39And then the other one, 4Q Deuteronomy Q,

53:43is just the Song of Moses, which is Deuteronomy 32.

53:48So these, I actually, you know, I'm getting out of that,

53:52and I'm trying to get people out of the habit

53:54of even calling these manuscripts of Deuteronomy

53:58because they're not.

53:59They are manuscripts of, in the one case,

54:03this single poem, the single poetical composition

54:07that ended up getting plugged into the Book of Deuteronomy

54:11or maybe was the source of what became

54:14the Book of Deuteronomy over time,

54:16but it existed on its own, right?

54:19At this time.

54:20- Oh, so you're not saying that this was like

54:22the reader's digest version of Deuteronomy.

54:24You're saying that this predated Deuteronomy

54:26and was included into Deuteronomy, maybe.

54:29- Perhaps, I mean, the theories are,

54:32the theories, you know, there's a couple of theories

54:35about how this happened.

54:36I tend to think that Deuteronomy 32

54:40was probably the original core

54:43and the rest developed around it,

54:46and these manuscripts are, you know,

54:48the first one is dates to, I think, 50 BCE,

54:56and the other one is a little bit older,

54:58it's closer to about 100 BCE,

55:00but if you think about that,

55:01this is close to the time of,

55:06so this is the time of the Hasmoneans,

55:08this is the time of Herod

55:11when you still have this very obviously

55:15polytheistic sort of theology within the text themselves.

55:20Now, one of the reasons for that,

55:24this is an idea that has been forwarded

55:28by Benjamin Zimmer, and I quite like this,

55:31so I've adopted it and I'm telling everyone.

55:35So how is it that these manuscripts of Deuteronomy

55:40survived that long in this form

55:43and where did the alternative reading

55:45that appears in the Masoretic text of Deuteronomy 32

55:49versus 8 to 9 come from?

55:51- Yeah. - The way he answers this question

55:54is he says, well, one of the things that we see

55:59in not just in the Dead Sea Scrolls,

56:01this is certainly part of what we see in the Dead Sea Scrolls,

56:03but I would say Jewish Scrabble practice,

56:07by and large, on the whole,

56:10you see a tendency towards harmonization.

56:13What I mean by that is, you know,

56:15disparate parts of the text and the theology.

56:18There's this concentrated effort

56:20trying to get everything to match

56:23and to align with one another.

56:28This is why the Samaritan Pentateuch has taken chunks

56:33from the Book of Numbers and inserted them

56:35in the Book of Deuteronomy and vice versa

56:37to make sure where we have these parallel stories

56:41that they're all the same.

56:43We can't have-- - Yeah, the same thing happens

56:45in the New Testament where you'll have a reading

56:48from Matthew that gets, or a reading from Mark

56:50that gets inserted into Matthew

56:51so that Jesus' story is the same across the two books.

56:55- Yeah, exactly.

56:57So we tend to think, I tend to think,

56:59this was probably also happening in the Book of Deuteronomy

57:03and I think it's probably happening pretty early.

57:06So the way Benjamin Zemr puts it, he puts it like this.

57:13We know, the reading from the Masoretic texts is,

57:17instead of God giving Yahweh's inheritance

57:22as one of the sons of the gods, as one of the sons of El,

57:29he's giving him, he's giving an inheritance

57:33according to the number of the sons of Israel.

57:36We know from Genesis chapter 49

57:39that there were 70 people who came to Egypt

57:44in Jacob's family, the sons of Israel, right?

57:49We also know from Genesis chapter 10

57:52that there were 70 nations in that genealogy.

57:56So the thought is that at the time

57:59when the Book of Deuteronomy was being put together

58:03with these other texts like from the Torah

58:06that this created a bit of a problem

58:08and this was one way that they corrected this.

58:12Okay, yes, we're flattening some of this polytheism,

58:17but at the same time, we're providing this further explanation

58:22and this coherence that we see already in places

58:25like Genesis chapter 49 and Genesis chapter 10.

58:29So the reason why, and the reason why it's interesting

58:37that these manuscripts are small manuscripts,

58:41this is part of how a reading like this survives

58:46because these are not part of the Book of Deuteronomy

58:50because these are not part of a larger Torah

58:54as these people understand it as they're reading it.

58:57They don't even think to make this kind of a correction

59:00'cause there's not really any need to.

59:04- Well, it's not being brought together

59:05into a single corpus with this other text

59:08which the juxtaposition is not saying,

59:10"Hey, we need to make these agree."

59:13So I wanna make sure we have an opportunity to talk about this

59:15because you were instrumental in some recent research

59:19that has taken place relative to the Dead Sea Scrolls

59:22and I remember over a decade ago, us talking

59:26and you talking about not a lot of research

59:29into the materiality of the scrolls

59:31and you being very interested in understanding

59:33the production of the scrolls and their materiality and--

59:38- I actually think that might have been one of our,

59:40one of our first conversations.

59:43- Throw it over, a lot of things.

59:45- At Trinity Western, for those who,

59:48I don't know if we said it yet,

59:49but when I was at Trinity Western University

59:52for my second master's thesis in lovely,

59:54Langley, British Columbia, Kip was there,

59:57was it a postdoc or were you on the faculty?

60:02- You had done your-- - I think it was on a postdoc.

60:05- Postdoc at Trinity Western,

60:06teaching some classes and stuff

60:08and we became fast friends.

60:12So there have been fragments of Dead Sea Scrolls

60:15that have popped up on the market in the last 20 or so years

60:19and they're being bought up-- - Yeah, I've got on here

60:20at my house.

60:21- They're being bought up by the Greens

60:27and by universities, particularly Christian oriented

60:31universities, I think Azusa Pacific is one of the main ones,

60:34but there are a few different ones.

60:35- Southwestern Baptists.

60:37- Southwestern Baptists, okay.

60:38And one of my favorite variants was a part

60:42of one of these fragments from Deuteronomy 27

60:46where we have the Gerasim reading.

60:49- Oh yeah, right.

60:51- So instead of Moses saying

60:55that you're gonna shout these things from Ebal,

60:58it actually says Gerasim,

61:01which would be a variant reading

61:04that supports the antiquity of the Samaritan tradition.

61:08And so how many of these fragments

61:11have surfaced and were purchased, I think since 2002?

61:15- I've counted around 80.

61:18- 80? - Yeah.

61:20- Oh my gosh, I think I've only read about less

61:23than a dozen of them, but there have been--

61:25- And the inventories are not, as this goes,

61:30when one of the difficult things is so much

61:35of our information comes from collectors

61:38who have purchased these things

61:40and have everything to lose in terms of their authenticity

61:45and then-- - By subjecting them to analysis.

61:49- Yeah, and then dealers and antiquities

61:54sellers who aren't all that cooperative either.

61:59So the numbers are not especially consistent.

62:05- But you and a handful of others were able to gain access

62:10to some of these and conduct some analysis,

62:15which resulted in a pretty attention grabbing conclusion,

62:20which was what?

62:23- We're suspicious that probably all of them are forgeries.

62:28- Yeah. - Wow.

62:29- We're confident that a huge number

62:35of them are forgeries and scientific forensic testing

62:40has been conducted on, I think it's nine fragments

62:43from this going collection on all 16 fragments

62:46from the Museum of the Bible

62:48and has demonstrated with a high degree of confidence

62:53that yes, they were in fact produced in modern times.

62:58And this wasn't something that,

63:03this was part of my second postdoc was in Norway

63:07and I went there.

63:08One of the things I was supposed to be working on

63:12was the publication of Martin Scoyan's Fragments

63:17and Artifacts in his private collection

63:21from Qumran and it was in the course of doing that work

63:26that I and a few of my colleagues started to get very suspicious

63:30about these fragments that we were working on.

63:33And then at around the same time,

63:35I was also asked by Emmanuel Tove

63:40to help him with the publication

63:44of the Dead Sea Scrolls Fragments be longing

63:48to hobby lobby to the Green family and the Museum of the Bible.

63:52So now you just held up,

63:54sorry, you've just held up two books to your camera.

63:56Give us the titles of those books just so that we have.

63:58- So this is a book you can't buy anymore

64:01because it was discontinued by Brett.

64:03So this is Dead Sea Scrolls Fragments

64:07in the Museum collection.

64:10So this is the addition of forgeries

64:13belonging to the Museum of the Bible.

64:17And because the forgeries, that's why you can't buy it anymore.

64:20- Yeah.

64:21- Maybe it's worth something.

64:21- I don't know.

64:22- Maybe it's worth as much of those as those scroll fragments.

64:27- Oh, that'd be something.

64:28The other one, Gleanings from the Caves,

64:32Dead Sea Scrolls Artifacts from the Scoyan collection

64:35is published by T&T Clark and it's not just Dead Sea Scrolls

64:40fragments, there's a couple of other items of interest

64:46in here as well.

64:47There's like a piece of a sandal.

64:51There's Scoyans got a jar,

64:56one of the jars from Cumbron.

64:59He's got like an inkwell and a little bronze altar.

65:04So it's also artifacts.

65:06But so that was published by T&T Clark.

65:11And that one, I do believe you still can buy

65:15because by the time we got around to getting the book published,

65:20we had already settled on nine of his 32 fragments

65:25that we were pretty confident were forgeries.

65:27And when we ran the forensic testing on them,

65:29they all turned out to very probably be forgeries.

65:34And I'm coaching my language here because as my friend,

65:38the great physicist who helped us out in Berlin,

65:42he had a bin, always tells me we can't prove anything.

65:46So there you go.

65:48Yeah, they're fakes.

65:50- So what you're telling me is that I shouldn't let you

65:53anywhere near my fragment.

65:55- No, this is the great lesson, right?

65:58And even I have to say, this was a,

66:02I'm a pretty naive person, I think, in many respects.

66:07And when a few of us started to have suspicions

66:12about Scoyan's fragments,

66:14the first thing we did, one of my colleagues

66:17or a Stan Eustonist started putting just data together.

66:22And he compiled a 30 page memo of just things

66:28about the fragments that seemed odd, suspicious,

66:33peculiar, raised questions that we couldn't answer.

66:38And, you know, indicated that maybe these are fakes.

66:42And he sent that memo to Mr. Scoyan and to his credit,

66:47Scoyan basically gave us the freedom

66:54to do the work necessary to make this determination.

66:59Now, with some caveats, he told us at the outset

67:06that he would only allow us to test those fragments,

67:11which we were most concerned about,

67:14the ones we had the highest suspicions on.

67:16So we had to sort of narrow the list down.

67:19So it ended up being nine.

67:23I think I have gone on record as saying,

67:26I think there's probably more in this Scoyan collection.

67:29But as you can imagine, once we demonstrated

67:33that nine of his fragments were forgeries,

67:35he wasn't about to say, "Oh yeah, go test the rest of them."

67:38- Go after him, come on, man.

67:40- So one of the nice things about working

67:43with the Museum of the Bible was that once somebody

67:47convinced them, and there was a group of people

67:49working in the curatorial department at the time,

67:53Kristin Askelan, Josephine Drew in particular,

67:58were instrumental in convincing the Museum of the Bible

68:03that they needed to do this.

68:05So the nice thing about working for the Museum of the Bible

68:09was they had lots of money.

68:11And these tests are really expensive.

68:15So they had the wherewithal to undertake the expense.

68:20And I spent another two years after I had worked on

68:27and helped publish the book of the fragments,

68:32I then spent the next two years working on demonstrating

68:36that they were all forgeries, which was a weird sort of situation.

68:41- That's good for a second book right there.

68:43That's a great sequel.

68:45- Which it's kind of funny, like if you see Dead Sea Scrolls

68:45- Yeah, right.

68:49for sale in the New York Times,

68:52maybe give second thought to that.

68:56However, when the Dead Sea Scrolls were originally found,

68:59yeah, back in the '40s, they did that.

69:02They put an ad in the New York Times.

69:04- Wall Street Journal.

69:05- Was it Wall Street Journal?

69:07- Wall Street Journal, yeah.

69:08So there's an interesting story about that.

69:11- Actually, you know what?

69:12I'm sorry, I am going to cut you off.

69:14We have got an overtime and I want that interesting story,

69:17but I'm gonna be very mean to our listeners

69:20and say that if you want to hear this interesting story,

69:24you're going to have to become a patron of the show

69:28and go and listen to our after party

69:30where Kip will join us and tell us this fascinating story.

69:33But until then, Kip Davis, thank you so much

69:36for joining us on the show.

69:38Would you tell our friends at home

69:41how they can find your work,

69:43where they can find more of you out there in the universe?

69:48- Absolutely.

69:49So I have a YouTube channel

69:52where I'm publishing most of my content these days.

69:55It's just my name, Kip Davis.

69:57I make videos about the Bible,

70:00about the critical study of the Bible.

70:02I do a lot of work countering ridiculous

70:06and pseudoscientific claims about the Bible,

70:08very much like Dan, but not as frequently as Dan

70:12and my material tends to get into the weeds a little bit.

70:15And then I also have, I have a course, an online course

70:22called Is there a Light Religion's Facts on the Ground

70:26and Propaganda in the Bible

70:27that you can find on MVP courses

70:30where I basically go through,

70:32it's a 13-hour course, it's 18 lectures,

70:36where I go through and try to uncover

70:39what the religions of ancient Israel actually really looked like

70:44and then how those ideas developed

70:47into the texts that we have in our Hebrew Bible.

70:51And I think that's it, I think so.

70:55- Excellent.

70:55Well, thank you so much for joining us.

70:58It's been a treat having you.

71:00If you, friends at home would like to hear

71:03the rest of the story that Kip's gonna tell us

71:06and more fun chat, you can become a patron

71:10over at patreon.com/data/dogma.

71:14If you join at the $10 month level,

71:16you will be able to hear the after party

71:20that we've been talking about.

71:22If you would like to contact us, you can reach us.

71:24The email address is contact@data/dogmapod.com

71:29and we'll talk to you again next week.

71:32- Bye everybody.

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